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Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2006-12-01 - 10:56 a.m. An accelerated rate I�m wearing a t-shirt today. A t-shirt. On December 1st. 70 frickin� degrees F. I think global warning and Unevent really ruin my holiday season. Christmas equals snow in my world, or at least cold. Fire next to the tree. I can�t get enthused about Christmas when it�s 70 degrees. And Unevent. Sigh. In Theo world, the weekend after Thanksgiving is for R&R. Resting & Relatives because you�re either with your relatives or you are resting from being with your relatives. In my heads, the next weekend, that first weekend in December, is AOD�s birthday and the weekend for Christmas decoration. But, alas no. First weekend in December is Unevent. By the next weekend, Christmas is 2-3 weeks away and I feel like I�m behind and rushing to get into the Christmas spirit. Now you know what I think about in the shower. Where the devil have I been? Work and family. November is Roland�s family�s big birthday, family palozza month. This year, all the siblings have worked for months to plan a surprise 70th birthday party for Mom. Our California clan couldn�t make it, so we moved it to the weekend closest to her birthday. Then, Mom bought the California clan plane tickets so they�d be with her on their birthday. The weekend before party palozza. On the originally weekend we have planned. Without warning us in advance. So (a) the invitations were already sent so they *still* couldn�t attend and (b) Mom-in-law plans a lovely weekend with our distant clan, with food, fun, old friends and activities every day. Then the next weekend, unbeknownst to her, is party setup all week. My mom comes to the party cause my mom and mom-in-law get along famously having joined forces in the subtle please-have-grandchildren lobby. So my mom visits for five days convergent with all the party madness. Friday night setup, Saturday night party, Lis is a wonderful friend and helps us out by tending bar and serving up food. Love the Melly. Sunday night spoiled by wonderful father-in-law for intimate family dinner at the Inn at Little Washington. (Dwell happily on wonderfulness of the Inn. I love the Inn.) But. To participate in each of these things was a one to two hour drive each way. I love my family and in-laws, I had a fabulous time at each activity, but I�m am so done with spending two hours on the road every day I have off. Oh wait, I get to go to Unevent, five-six hour drive both ways. And today it�s rainy and hot. Speaking of days off, I think I can sneak out early today since I�ve been here 11 to 13 hours a day this week cause we�re just starting testing activities. I�ll have to work Sunday, but that�ll be better. If you�ve never been an engineer involved in building a huge complex system, let me describe it this way. Combine the punchness of your most intense team school project where you�re exhausted and ebullient simultaneously with barely controlled chaos caused by no one being on the same page. Now raise that to the power of three. Now add sugar and caffeine. Meanwhile, our technical perfectionists writing checks the managers don�t want to cash culminating in both sides treating the engineers on my level like ping-pong balls and being grumpy about it. We are so done. After suffering for six-eight weeks, I think they�ve finally noticed efforts should be better coordinated. So they�re going to improve the process. Soon. Probably be all smoothed out by the time my team is done so when the rest of the project catches up to us, they�ll get an easy ride. I hate being first. And the irony is we�re not fast enough. My t-shirt says I can only conclude that I�m paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate. It was probably not the best shirt to be wearing when our project manager randomly toured the building today, but c�est la vie. It was better than last Friday which said I�ve found you can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word. I�d wear that one to Unevent if it wasn�t in the wash. But, I bid you adieu. Right now I have to go check on a test where we are spinning things in circles and we're very happy about that. � � � 
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